MIT Students Take Pictures from Space on $150 Budget.

[Taverner]

This is sooooooooooooo cool!!!

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Two MIT students have successfully photographed the earth from space on a strikingly low budget of $148. Perhaps more significantly, they managed to accomplish this feat using components available off-the-shelf to the average layperson, opening the doors for a new generation of amateur space enthusiasts. The pair plan to launch again soon and hope that their achievements will inspire teachers and students to pursue similar endeavors.



Justin Lee and Oliver Yeh have always dreamed of seeing the earth from space, but until recently, they believed that they had neither the budget nor the technical expertise to get a camera into the stratosphere.

Early September, in a moment of creative inspiration, the pair devised an innovative low-cost, low-effort method for space photography. The device they created cost less than $150, and they were able to build it without any significant modifications to out-of-the-box electronics.



The secret behind their success was figuring out which consumer-ready components to pick-and-match to solve the problems space photographers face. Their device had to: rise to an altitude high enough to capture space photographs, withstand extreme temperatures of the stratosphere, and be trackable/recoverable.



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http://www.ireport.com/docs/DOC-328198


http://1337arts.com/

[Ptah]

1. Thanks for posting this, Taverner

I love ingenuity.

:thumbsup:

[1Hippiechick]

2. "... in a moment of creative inspiration..." Oh, that all of us could be attuned to these moments...

they are here and available to all of us, but we have to be aware, to listen, and to act....

[surrealAmerican]

3. very cool

Thanks for posting this.

[Muttocracy]

4. you should post this in the science forum too - cool!

[denbot]

5. Way cool post Taverner.

If only I didn't have a ton of stuff on my plate, I would like to see if I could do this.